So far, competitive victimhood has mainly been studied by social psychologists in contexts in which two groups that were involved in the same conflict compete over the severity of their respective sufferings (Noor, 2008). However, several societal instances of competition between victim groups that did not harm each other in the past have been reported in the media (e.g. the Dieudonné affair in France), and were studied in other disciplines (Chaumont, 1997; Todorov, 2001). We argue that, in some circumstances, groups that did not harm each other in the past, but were harmed by a third group (either by the same or by a different group of perpetrators), can compete over the recognition of their past sufferings. This competition can then foster negative intergroup attitudes. We hypothesized that the perceived lack of recognition of in-group victimhood, combined with the perception that an out-group benefits from a greater recognition of its victimhood, could lead to intergroup animosity, and that this effect could be due to a sense of relative lack of recognition of in-group victimhood compared with that granted to another group. I will present three studies. In Study 1, Sub-Saharan Africans living in Belgium (N=129) completed a questionnaire survey. In Study 2, we replicated the first study among Muslims in Belgium (N=127). Finally, in order to ascertain the causal relationship between a relative lack of victimhood recognition and intergroup attitudes, we experimentally manipulated it in Study 3 (N=183). We created four different versions of a scenario in which the in-group (psychology students) and an out-group (law students) were victimized by a third group (business students). Then, the authorities (the university) recognized the victimization of: both groups (Condition 1), none of the groups (Condition 2), only the in-group (Condition 3), or only the out-group (Condition 4).

2014/2015

Seven studies conducted in the USA demonstrate that people with a strong political preference at both ends of the political spectrum—both strong Republicans and strong Democrats—represent reality differently, compared to moderates. Those at the political extremes categorize stimuli in a political environment more strictly according to political ideological lines and thus form a more simplified and clustered mental representation of reality. This pattern was obtained regardless of whether stimuli were politicians (Study 1), social groups in society (Study 2), or newspapers (Study 3). Furthermore, both strong Republicans and strong Democrats were more likely to make categorical inferences about the world based on their clustered mental representation of reality. This was found for estimating the likelihood that geographical location determines voting (Study 4), that political preference determines personal taste (Study 5), and that political preference shapes social relationships (Study 6). Finally, Study 7 confirmed the causal direction of this effect, by demonstrating that the effect of a strong political preference on these categorical inferences is amplified if political preference is made temporarily salient. Together, these results demonstrate that a strong political preference leads to a more clustered mental representation of political reality. Reality appears simpler and in fewer shades of grey to the politically extreme than to moderates.

It has often been suggested that the role of a scientist is commonly associated with male gender, which may have negative implications for female researchers. The evidence supporting this view comes predominantly from surveys and projective tests (“draw-a-scientist”). In this project I conduct three studies using novel methodology, based on existing field data. In Study 1 I find that academic researchers citing others’ work are much more likely to incorrectly attribute gender of female compared to male authors, presumably due to the male-scientist stereotype. The limitation of the study is that English grammar rarely calls for gender attributions at all. Therefore in remaining studies I make use of Polish language texts, in which e.g. expressions like “praca Glanzera i Cunitza” imply that both cited authors are thought to be male (while in fact the passage may refer to the work of Murray Glanzer and Anita Cunitz so that “praca Glanzera i Cunitz” is the correct form). In Study 2 gender imbalance analogous to that identified in Study 1 is found in psychology master theses authored by male, but not female students. In Study 3 (which is still in progress) I compare prevalence of the two types of mistakes in references to eponymous scientific phenomena in popular texts.

Prejudice towards members of different social groups represents one of the most pressing issues in society. The presentation will summarize outcomes of several studies examining factors that can shape outgroup attitudes. First, I will introduce three studies focusing on the effect of nouns vs. adjectives for nationality and ethnicity labels on outgroup attitudes. A follow-up study attempted to disentangle the effects of linguistic devices and valence of bogus news about minority members on attitudes towards minorities. However, one-off presentation of articles about outgroups might not be enough to counteract repeated exposure to media news or outgroup members. In order to contrast different sources shaping outgroup attitudes, I will compare the effect of media exposure to direct forms of intergroup contact with minority members. Past intergroup contact research has been criticized for a neglect of negative effects of experiences with outgroup members. In the last presented study from five Central European countries, I will show how positive and negative contact differently influence outgroup attitudes.

2013/2014

The present study investigates the relationship between TV consumption and Islamophobia that is a severe issue in Germany and other Western societies. Despite the large number of Muslims living in Germany and the frequent public debates on Islam-related issues in Germany, direct contact between non-Muslims and Muslims in Germany is rather rare. Therefore, media representations of Muslims are a crucial source of information and opinion for German non-Muslims. To contribute to explanations and possible solutions with regard to Islamophobia, the present two-wave field study investigates the role of TV consumption in a sample of non-Muslim Germans (N = 97; aged 14-33). Past research indicates a negative bias in Islam-related news coverage, which is especially extreme in German private TV channels. With a focus on negative events and Islamist terrorism the whole group of Muslims is predominantly depicted in a stereotypical, negative way. Additionally, these reports on private TV are often highly dramatized and emotionalized, possibly leading to stronger anti-Muslim sentiment in its viewers.

Slater's (2007) theory of reinforcing spirals of media selectivity and effects serves as theoretical background. It posits that media content and frequency of media use can influence users' attitudes. Simultaneously, these attitudes can influence the choice of media content and the frequency of media use. The present study seeks to provide evidence for and to refine Slater's theory. Therefore, TVconsumption is differentiated into general quantity and specific quality (divided into preference for public channels vs. private channels).

We assumed (a) a significant cross-sectional relationship of quantity and quality of TV consumption (preference for public/private channels) to the Islamophobia level, and (b) a mutual reinforcement of quantity/quality of TV consumption and Islamophobia over time. Results of structural equation modelling showed significant, positive relations of private channel preference to levels of Islamophobia(cross-sectional) and a mutually reinforcing spiral process between the private channel preference and Islamophobia over time. Thus, users preferring private TV-channels become more Islamophobic over time. Simultaneously, strongly Islamophobic users show increased preferencesfor private TV-channels over time. Users preferring public TV-channels exhibit no increase of Islamophobia over time and a lower level of Islamophobia did not lead to an increase in preferences of public channels. Additionally, the analyses showed no longitudinal influence of quantity of TV consumption on Islamophobia.

These results emphasize (a) the importance of a specification of the construct of media use central to Slater's (2007) theory and (b) the need for an improvement of the Islam-related news coverage to decrease Islamophobia in German.

The aftermath of the global financial crisis is an exciting time for social scientists, since it dramatically revealed flaws in the reigning paradigms of social development. Last six after-crisis years delivered numerous evidence that people’s values and expectations toward development differ across cultures.

Therefore author postulates that previous paradigms used to measure development were probably biased in the direction of individualistic values. Author claims that in the near future the cultural variety of development goals, and paths leading to those goals, may and should be reflected in quantified index of development. The major challenge is to combine existing knowledge into the methodology allowing for more thorough understanding of the key though culturally diversified factors of development.

The idea of planned interdisciplinary research is to combine economic knowledge on development (e.g. summarized by the Economics Noble Award recipients’ team of Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, 2009) and methodologies used in various cross-cultural psychology projects quantifying cultural diversity of human values and practices (e.g. Schwartz, 2011; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004; Hofstede, 2001). The objective is thus to create and test the methodology for Culturally Sensitive Development Index (CSDI). The outcome will help understand diversified paths of development, which is the issue of high societal, practical and political importance.

Negative stereotypes and prejudice can have pervasive, deleterious effects on our perceptions of outgroup members. These consequences manifest and interact at implicit (or fast, automatic, etc.) and explicit (or slow, controlled, etc.) speeds of cognitive processing to bias perceptions of others accordingly. Less is known, however, about the nature of these interactions given their inherent complexity and temporal discordance. In this talk, I utilize electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and lesion patient methodologies to further our understanding of the causes and consequences of stereotyping and bias as well as the role that implicit and explicit cognitive processes play in their perpetuation. Findings demonstrate that negative stereotypic primes bias information processing early and often in the neural processing stream. This bias, in turn, manifests in a variety of ways, including undermining the evolution of trust between outgroup members, the ability to predict how outgroup members might behave, and facilitating implicit encoding of novel outgroup members. As an intriguing caveat, I will also discuss recent genetic findings that suggest neural plasticity within specific regions of the brain moderates the expression and inhibition of implicit and explicit bias. Such findings highlight the importance of understanding the subtle yet striking bias stereotypes have on the perceptions and behaviors of the disenfranchised in our society, as well as the overall importance of using neuroscience methodologies to enrich our understanding of social psychological phenomena and vice versa.

26 października 2012: Irina Feygina (New York University), "In pursuit of the American Dream? Exploring the trajectories and consequences of system justification among immigrants"

For many immigrants, entering a new country entails becoming members of low status groups within the host socioeconomic system. This often results in exposure to stereotyping, prejudice, and ideologies which devalue immigrants’ ethnic or racial groups and their members. Because such ideologies form an important foundation for maintaining the extant social hierarchy and status quo, immigrants face a trade-off between the need to defend and bolster their ethnic group membership and identity and the need to justify and engage in the overarching system of the host country.

Findings from system justification theory suggest that low status group members are often influenced by and at times accept negative attitudes about themselves and their ethnic groups to the extent that they are motivated to legitimize and rationalize the system they inhabit. We propose that first generation immigrants may be protected from the negative effects of system justification because of their experience with an alternative socioeconomic system and beliefs pertaining to the social hierarchy, as well as an ability to experience a sense of success and advancement in the new system. By contrast, second generation immigrants may not be able to make use of such resources, and experience negative consequences of system justification.

Findings from a multiethnic immigrant sample in the U.S. support this prediction. First and second generation immigrants evidence different patterns of engagement in system justification. Moreover, among second, but not first, generation immigrants, rationalizing the system is associated with a stronger influence of public, often negative, attitudes towards their ethnic or racial group on their private group attitudes. In addition, among second generation immigrants who are highly identified with their ethnic group, engaging in system justification is associated with a decrease in personal well-being. These findings provide a first look into the conflict between identification with one’s ethnic group and the overarching system as it develops across immigrant generations.

I will examine the influence of pervasive gender roles on the activation of ingroup bias. An associative procedure was used to expose participants to stereotypical vs. counter-stereotypical gender roles, and an evaluative priming task measured participants’ automatic responses. Results indicate that women react to sexist role relations at the implicit level showing evaluative resistance (i.e., favouring their ingroup over the outgroup) when they have been exposed to stereotypical social roles and they are primed with them. Further, exposing participants to stereotypic role associations promotes negative emotions in women as well as increased persistence on a subsequent stereotype-relevant task. The results are discussed in terms of the motivational influence of perceived discrimination in intergroup relations. New studies and future directions in this line of research will be presented and discussed.

In recent years social geography debates have become more engaged in the living in/with difference in an urban space, particularly in reference to more respectful intergroup relations in diverse environments (Amin 2002; Valentine 2008; Thrift 2005; Wessel 2009). It has been acknowledged that mundane encounters in public spaces do not lead to meaningful contacts and prejudice reduction, in turn, there has been a growing interest in how people experience everyday encounters in smaller scale spaces (Andersson et al. 2011; Hemming 2011; Matejskova and Leitner 2011; Watson 2009). Nonetheless, quality of urban contacts in various sites have not been systematically investigated and compared in the one research yet. This paper continues this critical debate on urban encounters by including wider array of sites that can facilitate improved forms of intergroup relations. Specifically, it draws on a representative survey on attitudes conducted in Leeds in 2011. Through developing linear regression models I examine what spaces of encounters constitute the most significant predictors of people overall attitudes towards diversity and in three dimensions: ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability.

Most research on collective violence and victimization to date has focused on the destructive outcomes of awareness of the ingroup’s past or present victimization – which I refer to as “group-based victim consciousness.” However, I propose that these destructive outcomes arise primarily as a result of a specific kind of victim beliefs, which are focused exclusively on the ingroup’s victimization and the uniqueness of the ingroup’s suffering. I refer to these kinds kind of victim beliefs as “exclusive victim consciousness.” In contrast, “inclusive victim consciousness” entails awareness of similarity with other group’s suffering, and I propose that this kind of victim consciousness predicts constructive, prosocial outcomes toward other victim groups. In this talk I will present findings from several contexts (minority groups in the U.S., Northern Ireland, India, and East Africa) that support this idea, and discuss factors that moderate the relationship. I will also present preliminary findings on predictors of inclusive victim consciousness from studies conducted in Sri Lanka, East Africa, and U.S. Finally, I will discuss some recent extensions of this model, differentiating distinct underlying motivations for expressions of inclusive victim consciousness that may be strategic rather than empathic and outgroup-focused in nature.

An immense amount of information is conveyed by the face, and this information is utilized by others to categorize people into groups such as those based on race. Such categorizations are involved in a robust phenomenon known as the Cross-Race Effect (CRE), where people are better at recognizing members of their own race, as compared to members of other races. Studied for roughly 40 years, most work examining the CRE has depicted this effect as relatively immutable, in that the strength of racial categorization cannot be overcome. However, recent work has revealed that face-recognition is functional, and more fluid than previously conceived. I will discuss a series of studies demonstrating three things: 1) that facial-recognition can be based upon non-physiognomical, abstract categorizations, such as university-affiliation, rather than race, and 2) when other categorizations are more important or more salient, race is not necessarily the dominant categorization, and 3) that the situational context can determine whether the in- or outgroup is better attended to and recognized.